New England's Vineyards & Wineries

Jay Bell

Finding new ways to enjoy a Saturday afternoon.

Sakonnet Vuneyards offers lots of outdoor seating for a beautiful day, and is open year-round.

As spring crawls out from its winter hibernation, bringing the first color of the season and taking the edge off of the chill, we opted for a road trip along a stretch of New England’s coastal wine trail. This “trail” is made up of over a dozen wineries along the edge of southern New England.Carolyn’s Sakonnet Vineyard is one such winery, located in Little Compton, Rhode Island. It absolutely did not disappoint, featuring great wine in an almost other-worldly environment.

Little Compton is on the eastern side of Rhode Island, surrounded by the Sakonnet River, the Watson Reservoir, and the mouth of Buzzards Bay, with the open Atlantic Ocean beyond. Unlike so many coastal towns, it’s not heavily developed; there are farms and open land that stretch down to the shoreline. It’s also very flat. This quiet combination creates a significant open expanse of land unlike most places someone could visit.

Sakonnet is located in Little Compton, RI, nestled amidst beautiful farms and old homes.

Sakonnet Vineyard is on the outskirts of town, between the small but scenic downtown and the equally beautiful town of Tiverton that you’ll drive through to get there. Sakonnet Vineyard boasts over 150 acres, 30 of which produce wine, making it a large vineyard by New England standards.

The vineyard was founded in 1975, making it one of the older ones in the area. Its location creates a microclimate and soil condition allowing for slower-developing grapes that have low sugar levels and high acidity. You’ll mostly find white wines, with a rose, blush, couple of reds, and couple of dessert wines to round out the offerings.Sakonnet Vineyard is designed to encourage you to linger; there are more tables and chairs outside than I could count, mostly filling up a rock wall-lined field. The far side of the field creates plenty of privacy from the scrub trees so commonly found by the coast. On warm summer days, it would be hard to not spend a couple of hours sitting around and enjoying good wine and conversation, and taking in the ambiance. With a gift shop and café, there’s even more incentive to stick around for a while. On the day we visited, there was a chill in the air so we stayed in the tasting room.

Sakonnet Vineyards offers a store and cafe in addition to its tasting room and grounds.

That tasting room created a different but complementary feel to the outside fields. It featured a lot of stonework, large pieces of artwork, music in the background, and a large bar with several staff tending to the tastings. It creates a feel of an upscale wine bar that you might find in a city, but it maintains an intimate feel.Sakonnet’s tastings run $13 for seven samples. With more than seven wines, you can choose the ones closest to your preferred wines, but still with some room to experiment. We found the overall lineup to be solid from start to finish. The whites were a mix, with both a lighter and heavier chardonnay for whichever season you’re in; and the vidal blanc seemed perfect for an upcoming a summer’s afternoon after the beach, or with a seafood dinner on the back patio.Sakonnet’s rose was particularly strong, with a deeper pink hue than many, and flavorful for a rose, with notes of strawberry and cranberry, which would allow it to be perfect not just in summer but also for Thanksgiving.Our favorite turned out to be the “blessed blend red”, a mix of cabernet franc, lemberger, merlot, and cabernet sauvignon. This wine has been winning medals for several years running and it’s easy to see why. It evidenced tastes of dark chocolate and cherry. It was flavorful but not heavy, as some blends can be. This was bold enough to be a good wine in winter, but still light enough to work well in warmer seasons and to accompany barbecued meats on the back grill.We finished with a dessert wine, their Winterwine. It’s an ice wine that was unusual and great, served very cold. It’s thicker, with honey and apricot flavors and a very long finish, and is a perfect after-dinner wine during these colder months. While the warm weather is now approaching, it’s still worth buying and setting back for when the cold months return.

Sakonnet's tasting room is upscale but casual, perfect for any couple or group.

We purchased the blessed blend red, for $30, which was on the high end, as Sakonnet’s wines run $19-$30, not counting the Winterwine at $40. On this day, the store and café were closed, and the café was in the process of getting a facelift. With a couple of bachelorette parties making appearances, and with the weddings and events that Sakonnet can host, it’s clear that it will be a busy season for them. But, again, the amount of seating and open space are conducive to still feeling as if you’ve got your own space to enjoy an afternoon of peaceful and enjoyable conversation and wine.

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New England's Vineyards & Wineries

You don't need to fly to the west coast to find estate-grown wine. There are plenty that are just a drive away. Plenty more may import the grapes, but it's the winemaker's "special sauce" that leaves you wanting more!